


Small Packages

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Banter, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29872650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Gifts are rather unnecessary for people who have everything that they want. Roy is getting dangerously close to becoming one of those people.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 17
Kudos: 316
Collections: RoyEd Weekly Drabble Challenge





	Small Packages

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I'm so fixated on the dead characters this week. This one doesn't get too deep into it, but if that sounds like a bad thing for you, please don't read this. ♥
> 
> You SHOULD check out [Roy/Ed Events](https://royedevents.tumblr.com/), though, since this is for their new weekly drabble challenge! The prompt was "flowers", and the rest of the nonsense is mine. :3c
> 
> While you're out there on the dangerous internet, [Equivalent Exchange applications](https://equivalentexchangeanthology.tumblr.com/post/644127645060186112/due-to-the-climate-emergencies-across-the-world) are still open until this Sunday the 7th! Don't miss your chance to come party with us. C:
> 
> Set several years after Brotherhood, blah blah blah, you all know the drill. ♥

“Nothing?” Ed says, peering at a mantel clock that’s probably one gargoyle short of joining his personal collection. He prods at the filigree with a fingertip. “No guidance whatsoever?”

“Just ‘Surprise me’,” Roy says. An ornate dagger catches his eye, but he retracts his hand halfway to reaching for it. He’s lucky—far too lucky, in so many ways—but he’s not _that_ lucky. “Every year, I ask her what she wants for her birthday; and every year, that’s all I get to go on.”

“Jeez,” Ed mutters. “Guess that’s where you get that whole calculated-air-of-mystery obsession.”

“Thank you,” Roy says.

Ed eyes him and iterates what he already knows: “Wasn’t a compliment.”

“Anything can be a compliment,” Roy says, “with enough selective hearing and a positive attitude.”

Ed rolls his eyes so hard that it must hurt a bit, but at least he refrains from dropping any well-practiced profanities loud enough to draw the attention of the shop’s owner. They have nice antiques here; Roy would like to be able to come back without having to do so in disguise. “So, rough estimate—how many people over the course of your life have told you to your face that you’re obnoxious?”

“You’re making me blush,” Roy says. He skims his fingertips over the hair of a very eerie porcelain doll, despite the substantial risk of incurring some sort of eldritch curse. “I think it’s still in the low thousands. It is truly an honor to have had an impact on the lives of so many.”

Ed mutters something that sounds like it involves impacting a fist into Roy’s face, but not before Roy catches him hiding a smile.

Roy looks over the next cluttered table and tries not to despair. This is the best antiquary in town, but they really haven’t replenished their supply of startlingly bizarre curios since he came here last year and found Chris a set of wooden wine bottle stoppers carved into busts of all of the previous Führers. He’s not sure how he’s going to top that if he can’t find anything suitably inexplicable today.

It’s difficult to feel too bad, though, which is a bit of a pain in the neck for a soul as melodramatic as the one that he’s been saddled with. Despite last year’s easy triumph, this year’s shopping escapade has been significantly more fun due to the simple addition of Ed’s presence.

Ed’s presence has that effect on a lot of things—on nearly everything, actually. Roy tries not to think about it too much. He’s already addicted; he never wants to take it for granted; if he starts to _rely_ on it, and something goes wrong—

That train of thought and the soundless music box that has monopolized the rest of his attention conspire to distract him, and he doesn’t vet the question before it slips out of his mouth: “What would you get if it was your mother?”

Ed has a peculiar command over silence. The shop creaks and rustles around them; the old clocks all tick out of time. The shop owner coughs, and cars pass by outside, but the void around Ed’s emotions is unmistakable and ineluctable even in the first instant.

Nothing else in the universe stops except for Ed, but Ed is all that there _is_.

“I don’t know,” he says. He picks up an old coin out of an old ashtray full of them and turns it over in his fingertips. It leaves visible dust-or-ash smudges on him; he’ll wipe them on Roy’s shirt later, and Roy probably won’t even care. Abjection ought to feel much worse. “I never knew her as an adult. I don’t… I mean, aside from us, I don’t really know what she… liked. What she did. Except that she had lousy taste in men.”

“Runs in the family,” Roy says, very softly.

Ed half-smiles, but it doesn’t crease the corners of his eyes. “Took the words out of my mouth, Mustang. Stealing’s illegal, you know.”

Roy watches him very closely. Ed puts the coin down and picks up a little ceramic figure of what might be a cat, as imagined by someone who had never actually seen a cat, but had had one poorly described to them several years before they tried to encapsulate its form.

“She used to read to us all the time,” Ed says. “And she did a lot of gardening, I guess. I think it would’ve been more important to her that we tried than that we got her something perfect. I dunno. What does your mom like to do, other than smoke and make fun of you?”

“Often at the same time,” Roy says, which brings the half-smile back. “I… she likes music. I am very nearly sure that she’s been writing some, lately, but she’s extraordinarily secretive about it. I suspect that she keeps her compositions in a vault.”

“You could get her a new vault,” Ed says. He wrinkles his nose. “Wait—nah. She’d think you were only doing that because you were planning on breaking into the new one. She’d never use it.”

“I,” Roy says, as an idea dawns rosily, “just had a thought.”

“Take it easy,” Ed says. He grabs up a spyglass that is probably worth a substantial portion of his monthly rent and peers through it. “Do you need to sit down? The first time can be pretty scary.”

“Brat,” Roy says. “It just occurred to me that I’ve been surprising her as much as possible for years now. Wouldn’t the logical progression be that the only way to surprise her this time would be to find her something completely _unsurprising_?”

Ed arches an eyebrow at him. “You’re doing the deliberately cryptic thing again.”

“I am _not_ ,” Roy says. “What I mean is—she’s expecting something outlandish, like every other year, so the most surprising gift at this point would be something painfully normal. Like… chocolates and flowers.”

Ed nods slowly, and then his eyes widen, and brighten, and he starts to grin. “Okay, but if you’re gonna do that—you gotta go _all_ the way. The most over-the-top normal gift the world has ever seen. Boatload of chocolates. Car full of flowers, with ribbon flyin’ out the windows and shit.”

“Ah,” Roy says, managing to suppress a grimace. “Would you believe that I know just the place?”

Ed snorts. “Nothing that you do surprises me anymore.”

Roy’s not entirely sure that that’s true. He takes them on a detour to buy several nice vases; and then on a second-phase detour to purchase a vast supply of staff paper, which he rolls up and puts into the vases to keep Chris creatively occupied for a while after she decides which flowers she wants to keep. Ed looks a little bit impressed at that. But even if he’s not _surprised_ …

Well. Roy’s pretty sure that he can live with that.

The car is very, very fragrant once they have crammed it full of bouquets. Ed pointedly rolls the window down and leans halfway out of it, but miraculously Roy can still hear him just fine: “So what are you gonna do for _my_ birthday?”

“Easy,” Roy says. “You’re going to get a stepladder, and I’m going to get a trip to the hospital. Two gifts for the price of one.”

Ed laughs the rest of the way to the bar.


End file.
